Jason Greenblatt was once an in-house adviser to the Trump Organization. After the 2016 election, he became Donald Trump’s special representative for international negotiations. With Jared Kushner, he tried to ensure peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Just like its predecessors, the Trump administration failed in this task.
That cold reality might lead some to think that the subtitle of Greenblatt’s new memoir, How Donald Trump Made Peace in the Middle East and How to Stop Joe Biden from Unmaking It, is at least a bit of an exaggeration.
On the other hand, Trump fulfilled the Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. The Trump administration also moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and scrapped the Iran nuclear deal. The 45th president left his mark in so many places, in so many ways.
As expected, Greenblatt’s book is silent on some of Trumpism’s darkest days, its ties to the anti-Semitic far right: Charlottesville, Nazis and tiki torch marches, the January 6 uprising. It’s also predictable that he’ll be happy with Barack Obama, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
Greenblatt left the White House at the end of 2019. He volunteers that Kushner was “the best boss I’ve ever had or will ever have — except for his father-in-law.” Today, Greenblatt acts as an investor, like Kushner, with an eye on the Middle East.
Greenblatt’s book is a milder, more graceful version of Sledgehammer, a memoir written by David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel. Like Friedman, Greenblatt attacks Biden and kisses Israel’s former and possibly future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As with Friedman, Greenblatt is keeping mum about Trump, who says of Netanyahu, “Shut him up,” as Barak Ravid said in Peace of Trump. Ravid hit Trump in all his profane and vindictive reality. He reported on Trump’s criticism of Netanyahu and his praise of aging Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Trump told Ravid he believed Netanyahu “didn’t want to make peace. Never did.” Of Abbas, Trump said: “We spent a lot of time together talking about a lot of things. And it was almost like a father. He was so nice, couldn’t have been nicer.”
Greenblatt skips over both questions, choosing to emphasize Abbas’s hostility to Israel and his reluctance to negotiate.
Greenblatt also says he stayed out of politics until Trump ran and first registered as a Republican in 2016. No one would confuse him with Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty and turned on his former boss.
Greenblatt doesn’t crave the spotlight, but can be subtly subversive. Abraham’s way is throwing punches at three of Trump’s enemies: Mike Pence, HR McMaster and John Bolton, McMaster’s successor as national security adviser. Trump blasted McMaster in a tweet after clashing over the Iran deal and sent Bolton packing for his belligerence.
“Pence was a refreshingly authentic article,” writes Greenblatt, “… a man who was steadfast and unfailingly helpful, no matter the problem, big or small.”
Greenblatt would not comment on Pence’s plight at the Capitol on Jan. 6, when a crowd called for him to be hanged, or Trump’s comment that his vice president deserved it.
During a 2017 trip to Israel, Trump excluded McMaster from a meeting with Kushner, Netanyahu and Israel’s national security adviser. According to Israeli reports, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was invited to join the group. But McMaster sat outside King David’s room throughout the meeting.
McMaster suffered in silence. Bolton did not. “I don’t think [Trump] is fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to do the job,” he told ABC while promoting his book.
Mike Pompeo, then secretary of state, called Bolton a traitor. White House trade hawk Peter Navarro, now working under contempt charges, called Bolton’s book “deep gender revenge porn.”
The Way of Abraham does not. But when Greenblatt conveys his impressions of the Arab world, he chooses to call Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “a true visionary leader.”
He writes, “I have no idea what then-candidate Biden was trying to accomplish when he said he was going to make ‘the Saudis pay the price and make them effectively the couple that they are.’
It had something to do with US intelligence, who believed the prince had ordered the murder, dismemberment and destruction of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and US resident who wrote for the Washington Post.
However, with gas above $5 a gallon, many Americans want Biden to make nice with the Saudis and stick to the script.
Greenblatt also praises the UAE leader, writing: “Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, colloquially known by his initials MBZ, is a unique leader. One of the most influential people in the Middle East, he is also one of the most modest and thoughtful people. Smart and exceptionally open-minded, he knows that the best way to plan for the future is to create it.
Greenblatt has received a global high citation in the same spirit of praise from Trump, Kushner, Pence, McMaster, Pompeo and ambassadors from the Gulf states. The book could be a prospectus.
When the book lands, Greenblatt suddenly finds himself in the news. Last week, the New York Times reported that he introduced Kushner to Alex Holder. Holder is a British documentary filmmaker who has been subpoenaed by a House committee investigating the Capitol riots.
Fittingly, In the Path of Abraham includes a Yiddish proverb: “Mann Tracht, un Gott Lacht.” Translated: “Man plans and God laughs.” Greenblatt would be hard-pressed to find anyone close to Trump who is smiling right now — whatever their plans.
Abraham’s Way: How Donald Trump Made Peace in the Middle East — and How to Stop Joe Biden from Undoing It, by Post Hill Press in the US
